From the jaws of victory

[drcuriosity]

Dental appointment today, finally. This time I got to talk to one of the dental surgeons, who seems to be a pretty good guy. Good manner with patients (or at least me), and made sure I had questions answered and let me know exactly what needed to be done and what the complications were.

Apparently my lower wisdom teeth may be a little close to the mandibular nerve, and my upper wisdom teeth may be a little close to the sinus cavities, which means they'll have to be careful not to upset either of those when they take my teeth out. Because of the orientation of the teeth and the position of the jaw, they're also going to have to burr away some of the jaw to get them out, too, which will require sedation.

So, I'm going to be scheduled for surgery eventually, when the people at the hospital get the necessary spare parts to get their dental surgery chair operational again.

In other news, I just called StudyLink to find out about my Student Allowance extension application (the second one, since the one I sent in more than a month ago never arrived) has been denied. Apparently I can't apply for an extension on the allowance I was getting last year because the course of study is over a certain length and I need to reapply. Which the StudyLink staff who I talked to and gave my paperwork to completely failed to advise me of.

So, I currently have no income whatsoever, and relatively little money left to pay rent, let alone eat. My face still hurts like a motherfucker, with relief in sight but still in the far distance. And I have an academic progress report to submit.

Time to get a loan, I guess.

Comments

[synicbast.livejournal.com]

The only people with any real idea of the actual hoops a student has to jump through are those who do the actual processing or have worked at the Processing centre prior to working at the various Studylink outreach centres...we're constantly bitching at the misinformation that gets given out by the outreach people...at least when you call the 0800 number you've a fairly good chance of getting through to people who actually know the real way things work. In an ideal world all outreach staff should do a 6 month stint processing but that's impractical trying to get people to move to Palmy for 6 months. Hopefully things will change as Study Link send out more trainers from the processing centre over the next few months.

As regards any delays with the call centre...there's an ongoing technical snafu that has been exacerbated by a majot power outage in Palmy that took down the processing centre for almost two days - with the volume of incoming mail at its highest since SL started, it was exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time...there's still a 3-5 day processing time rather than the optimal 2 day turnaround.

Sorry to waffle on, but having been on both sides of the application fence, it really has been eye opening seeing the volume of work that is necessary for processing.

[synicbast.livejournal.com]

Oh and I'd love to be able to help out in a concrete fashion but ethically and policy wise, I'm unable to work on applications of people I know. So far the list of locked current files for me is just under 300 people. I'll grab some info from work tomorrow and look at potential solutions.

[drcuriosity]

I managed to get in touch with someone there tonight who seemed quite competent (Katrina, I believe her name was), and she managed to give me a bit of information and tell me who I needed to sort things out with at the university's end in order for things to be kosher for StudyLink to approve my allowance. She also said that if I had any further problems I could ask to be put through to her, as she's dealt with a few such situations. Colour me impressed; she certainly took a good chunk out of the stress of my day.

I quite understand and respect the ethics involved, and appreciate the strains that this time of year puts on StudyLink staff. Thanks for giving me a heads-up on how things are going on your side of the lines, in any case.